Tony and Susan

SEVEN

Susan Morrow is running out of book. Two, three chapters left at most. The gun goes off like a bomb on the page, and everything swirls down a funnel toward some disastrous end.

Violence thrills her like brass in the symphony. Susan, who is well past forty, has never seen a killing. Last year in McDonald’s she saw a policeman with a gun jump a guy eating a sandwich. That’s the size of violence in her life. Violence happens in the world, in the parks, ghettos, Ireland, Lebanon, but not in her life—not yet.

Knock wood, knock knock. Safe insured Susan lives on the verge of disaster because everything she knows has happened, whereas the future is blind. In a book there is no future. In its place is violence, substituting thrill for fear, like the thrill in a roller coaster. Never forget what’s possible, it says, if you, lucky Susan with secure home and family (so unlike the world), should happen like Tony to meet something vicious in the night. If you had the gun, would you use it any better than Tony?

Edward is coming, so is Arnold. The more the book shrinks, the closer they come, like tigers. The character named after her is a ninny. Susan Ninny, it hurts her feelings. She has no spare feelings to be hurt just now, and she reads on.

Nocturnal Animals 25

Tony Hastings saw Ray Marcus on the mountain road to George’s house. He took shape from the darkness in the flash of Tony’s headlights on a curve, man walking on the shoulder, gray shirt, jeans, reflecting buckle, turning to look, and Tony did not realize who he was until the man was again in the dark behind the car, though the possibility of seeing him had been on Tony’s mind from the start. Seeing him, he thought, that’s not Ray because that would be mind over matter, and then, after the flood of light had left the bald forehead and narrowed jaw and face, it was too late to stop. Tony’s instinct was to hide his face, requiring an explicit assurance to himself in words that there was nothing to fear, he being in the car and it too dark for Ray to make him out. He drove on, only then remembering he was supposed to capture Ray with that gun he had.

Going on up the next curve, he wondered if he should stop and go back and realized if he did the man would run into the woods. Therefore the real reason why he had not stopped was not fear of Ray but that the place was not propitious. He could not have stopped on the curve back there, jamming his brakes and backing up, without giving Ray the alarm and letting him get away. Maybe he could turn around further on and catch him from the other direction.

The road started to descend, and just as he was thinking the curves looked familiar, he noticed something white in the woods over the next curve and recognized in the dark, unlit, the trailer, the horrible deathbed trailer. He had not realized Bobby’s map, which he had memorized, would take him on this road. It shocked him, followed by some chilly thrill of wanting to stop, ghoul, but for his errand and Ray Marcus approaching on foot from the other side of the crest.

He drove more slowly now, still thinking about why he had not stopped to recapture Ray. He did not like to think what Bobby Andes would say, cowardice, sloth. He wondered if it was possible to capture him from a car at any place on this road. The curves, the woods, the night. On the other hand, knowing what to expect, having the gun, being prepared. He was Bobby thinking, Too many excuses. He decided to do it, yes, rectify the cowardice, what he owed. The question was when? Now or eventually. Whether he’ll disappear if you don’t do it now. On the other hand, there’s no place for Ray to go on this road, it’ll be a long time before he gets to another. The question was whether to interrupt his errand to George, so as to catch Ray, or go to George first. He didn’t want to have to catch Ray all by himself, but that did not have to be the reason. He would go first to George because how could he explain his prisoner while talking to George?

Then there was a better reason. He was not a deputy, it wasn’t his job to catch fugitives. More than that. The police themselves had released Ray Marcus, so it wasn’t police work at all. Nor had Tony Hastings murdered Lou Bates, it was Bobby Andes did that. Tony Hastings was not Bobby Andes. Repeat that. It wasn’t his fault Bobby had kidnapped Ray. It wasn’t his fault Bobby had shot Lou Bates. Up to now, he was a bystander, a witness, but not implicated. He hoped he was not implicated. But if he tried to detain Ray Marcus on his own, that would make him accomplice, accessory.

Catch him yourself, he said. Don’t involve me in your dirty tactics. A surge of anger, a certain joy, words rising. Don’t hook me in your terminal rage. Don’t crash your fatality on my head. Astonishment to see how much Bobby Andes took for granted. Assuming everyone made the same connection between grief, loss, and revenge. Assuming no one cared how the man died so long as he died. Assuming no one minded complicity in murder to avenge murder. Assuming everyone was as desperate as he. Tony thought, it’s my tragedy, who do you think you are?

They would say, We’ll hang your murderers, but we might hang you too. Detectives would probe his story for discrepancies. Courtroom lawyers would cross-examine him. Judges would ask why he allowed himself to get involved. Prosecutors pushing beyond the first excuse would search for the active conspiracy. Bystanders, strangers, and former friends would look for the even worse not yet revealed. In the solitude of the car he spoke, God damn you, Bobby. For a moment Bobby Andes was as unpleasant to him as Ray Marcus. For a moment only, for the thought shocked him, since it ignored the great evil done him and who was trying to pursue that evil and burn it out. Never allow yourself to forget the difference between Ray Marcus and Bobby Andes. Which restored to mind his debt to Bobby Andes, who for Tony’s sake was now jeopardizing his name and his career. It didn’t make Tony like him, but it made him feel ashamed. If he betrayed Bobby Andes now.

The darkened house just passed on the left must be George’s. He backed up and drove in the driveway, a white house without lights. The dogs barking in back would be the dogs he had come for. He remembered other sleeping houses a year ago when he had passed afraid to stop, to be a stranger at a rural door at night. He thought if he could get past the danger of knocking, George would recognize him. If they challenged, he could yell, Bobby Andes sent me.

Repeat the message: He wants your dogs over at his camp. Now, in the night, a man got away. The man himself—Tony just realized this—the man is no longer in the woods, the man is on this road a mile or so back, coming this way. So what do you need dogs for?

The absurdity of the message, Tony Hastings wondered what to do now. Parked here in George Remington’s driveway in sudden embarrassment, what to say if George wakes up? Or what to do instead? Do you go back to Bobby and say, I didn’t wake George because I saw Ray Marcus on the road, no need for dogs? I didn’t pick up Marcus either, but I can tell you where he was.

He remembered George was one of the police who had helped Bobby pick up Ray. Maybe it was all right to tell him. The man you helped catch got away. Bobby wanted your dogs, but since the man is right down the road now, you can recapture him yourself.

A light came on upstairs. A head appeared, silhouette, shadow, hair, no face. A female voice, “Who’s out there?”

Tony called from the car. “I’m looking for George.”

“What do you want with him?”

“Message from Lieutenant Andes.”

A short silence. He thought, I’ll ask George to come down, not to shout across this space. Bobby sent me, the man got away, I won’t say anything about shooting Lou. The woman in the window said, “He ain’t here. He’s working the night.”

“All right. Thank you.”

Thank God, he thought. Then he realized what faced him now, and the stupidity of his relief. Without George. He started the car but hesitated to back out because he couldn’t think what to do next. Two things, the only possibilities. Either he drove back to the camp (passing and ignoring Ray Marcus on the road) and waited there for Bobby to return with his men to pick up Lou, at that time to tell him I saw Ray Marcus on the road an hour ago but didn’t pick him up, he’s probably gone now but that’s where he was. Or he drove back, looking for Ray so as to stop and point the gun at him and make a threat convincing enough to persuade him into the car, putting his hands through the two open windows handcuffed together so that he could announce to Bobby when he returned to the camp with his men: I got him for you.

He drove slowly back. The gun lay ready on the seat. He searched the farthest reach of his headlights up the road looking for the first sight of a walking man. He did not know what he would do when he saw him, it was in the future, unrevealed, as unknown as someone else’s choice, or as if he were someone else, a stranger.

The previous image of Ray on the road had been the quick flash of a slide upon a screen, glare of light without color. Standing there, watching the car go by without fear, not hitchhiking but not realizing either that he might be pursued, for if he had wished he could have disappeared into the woods well before the approaching light reached him. Tony remembered himself watching the car’s lights, how they swung around, how they came at him, how he had to jump into the ditch. Here they were again, a year later, and now Ray was the hunted, Tony the hunter, and even the car was the same.

He passed the little white church and knew the trailer would appear in a moment and realized this was the first time since the original night he had been on these roads by himself. He imagined having the freedom to revisit alone and from the safety of this distance the places which had scarred his mind so deeply. He was not free yet, though, he was still on Bobby Andes’s errand, though no longer sure what the errand was, and Ray Marcus was approaching along this road. That was the main thing, Ray Marcus approaching on the road. He wondered why he hadn’t met him yet, he ought to have met him by now.

He saw the curve where the trailer would appear, which for the first time would not take him by surprise. Then it was there, he looked at it hard, and then, after checking to make sure Ray Marcus was not now coming around the curve, he stopped. He saw the dark window which had been lit before with a print curtain. He remembered inside with Bobby and George, where he had slugged Ray, how small it was, the brass bedposts on the little bed, the stove, the trashbox with newspapers. He wondered if he could look inside again now. But it might not be empty, someone might be living in it, someone might be in there. But no one was there because no car was parked. Then it occurred to him, Ray Marcus was there.

The possibility Ray Marcus was there, only a possibility, he said, call it rather not an impossibility. Say only, it was not impossible Ray Marcus was in there. For if Ray had continued walking from where they had passed before, they should have met again, well back down the road before now. He could have picked up a ride, but he had not been hitchhiking when Tony had passed. Almost certainly Ray Marcus was in the trailer. He would have arrived a few minutes after Tony had seen him and slipped inside to rest. It would explain why Tony had not met him again.

If he was there, he was probably looking out the window at the car. Tony picked up the gun on the seat. He fixed the safety so it wouldn’t go off while he moved about. He got the flashlight from the glove compartment. The chances of Ray’s being in the trailer were slight, Tony just wanted to take a look at it because he was by himself, because he had never seen it by himself. Or else, he wanted to check out Ray, make sure he wasn’t here. If he was, he had his gun.

With the gun and the flashlight, he got out of the car, making as little noise as he could. He slipped around the front of the car, into the ditch and up to the front end of the trailer. Pebbles scraping around his feet, he stopped, waiting for silence. He heard the distant roaring of mankind being civilized, but nearby nothing, only the wakeful stillness of the woods in the night. If Ray was watching, Tony had his gun. There was no way Ray could have acquired a gun of his own. If Ray stopped here to rest, he was probably asleep. Tony said, if Ray is here I will capture him. The reason I am doing this is to help Bobby Andes. Thinking again, Bobby Andes is helping me. Some other reason. He looked for it, this debt he owed. He told himself, it makes no difference if Ray did not kill Lou Bates, or if his arrest tonight was not legal, because he killed Laura and Helen, which I know.

He crept through leaves around the front of the trailer to the door. He thought, probably the door is locked. In that case I shall not pursue this further. I shall assume the trailer is empty and go back to Bobby’s camp. If I don’t meet Ray on the road, which seems likely now, I can report how he eluded me and there was nothing I could have done. Unless, if the door is locked, I might look with my flashlight in the window.

The door was not locked, the latch yielded. A moment’s alarm, too late, as he felt his fingerprints go onto the latch, which would have messed things up if this had been a year ago before they could take the fingerprints placing Lou and Turk here with the crime. He took the flashlight out of his belt with his left hand, the gun still in his right. He thought, if Ray is inside the door, waiting to jump. He cocked the gun again, held it up, nudged the door open with his side. He turned on the flashlight, swept its beam across the room, which was empty. He noticed the light switch by the door, switched on the light, and saw Ray Marcus asleep on the bed.

Who rolled over suddenly, covered his eyes, turned, squinted at Tony, sat up. “Christ,” he muttered. He fell back on his elbow.

“You,” he said. “Where’s your pal?”

“What pal?”

“Ganges, whoever.”

“Andes. He’s not here.”

“Your cop friends. Where are they?”

“They’re around.”

“Are they here?” He sat up and pulled back the curtain on the window, tried to look out.

“It’s just me,” Tony said.

“Just you? With that fucking gun? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Me? Aw Christ, what the hell for?”

“You know.”

“Aw shit.” He ran his hands through his mostly bald head. “I was asleep, man.” Tony waited. “What happened to Lou?”

“He was killed.”

“What? That sonofabitch killed him?”

“He’s dead.” Some odd shame prevented him from confirming it was Bobby who killed him, a shame Tony felt no obligation to feel.

“That’s big trouble for your friend, you know that?”

“He’s not my friend,” Tony said, wondering why he said it.

“He ain’t? Ain’t that interesting?”

“Let’s go,” Tony said.

“Go where?”

“I’m taking you in.”

“In where?”

“Back to the camp.”

“You ain’t taking me anywhere, mister.”

“You’re coming with me. Come on, now.” He jerked the gun.

Ray laughed. “You think that’s going to make me go?”

Tony cocked the gun. Ray got up and came toward him. For a moment Tony thought he was obeying, then he saw differently. “Stand back,” he warned.

“Relax,” Ray said. “I ain’t going to hurt you.” He turned to the door. “I’m just taking my leave. So long, old buddy.”

“Stop,” Tony said. He thought, desperate, it can’t happen again. He thought, resolve, I’m different now. He pointed the gun at the door, in front of Ray. There was an explosion and a flash and a violent force jerking his hand up. He saw Ray stop, yank his hands back like a burn. He saw the torn aluminum frame of the door jamb where the bullet must have hit.

He saw Ray looking at him with surprise. “Well,” he said. “You missed.”

Tony Hastings felt a thrill. “I wasn’t trying to hit you,” he said. “That was a warning.”

“Warning. Okay. May I go sit on the bed, sir?”

“Come on, outside. Let’s go to the car.”

Ray turned and went back to the bed, where he sat down.

“I said, let’s go.”

“What’s gonna make me?”

“I just showed you.”

“If you shoot me, what good will that do? You’ll have to carry me.”

“I’m not afraid to shoot you,” Tony said.

“Yeah.”

He did not move. Tony waited, and he did not move. Tony said, “Let’s go now,” and Ray opened his eyes wide, shrugged his shoulders, spread his palms out wide. Tony cocked the gun, and he clicked his tongue, tsk tsk. “I’m not afraid to shoot you,” Tony repeated, hearing the strain in his voice, and Ray did not move. Tony thought. He pulled up the little straight-backed chair, straddled it backward resting his chest on the chair back, and said, “Well, if you’d rather wait here, they’ll be along after a while.” Thinking that was true, they would look for his car when he didn’t show up, and they would find it here.

Then wondered if that much of a concession was a mistake.

Ray said, “You want me to wait for them?”

“You wouldn’t have to wait so long if you came in the car.”

“I don’t seem to want to do that, do I? Listen mister, I think I’ll be going now. It’s been nice talking to you.”

He got up and headed for the door again. Tony said, “I warned you. Watch out.” His voice was turning into a scream. “I don’t want to shoot you, but if you try to get away, I swear I’ll kill you.”

The strange voice stopped Ray, who put up his hands, okay okay, and went back to the bed. Tony thinking, if I can’t make you go, I can make you stay, and another thrill of power.

They sat looking at each other. Ray said, “Listen mister, why does a nice guy like you keep such crummy company? That Ganges Andes fella, he’s a bloodthirsty crook. He kills people. If I go back to him, he’s going to kill me, just like he did Lou. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

Tony thinking, he’s right about Bobby Andes. He said, “You kill people.”

“Aw shit.”

“Don’t you shit on that,” Tony said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here.”

The annoyance in Ray’s face, like something inconvenient he’d rather not talk about. Tony enjoyed seeing that look.

He said, “There’s no point denying it. I remember you.”

“You got a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Nah, of course you don’t.”

Looking at him, staring at him, after a moment Ray said, “They had it coming.”

“What? Who?”

“Your fuckin wife. That kid.”

The leap of Tony’s heart, after all these months, a whole year, news, news at last. “So you do admit it. It’s about time.”

“You got me wrong,” Ray said. “That was an accident.”

“What was an accident?”

“Your wife, yeah. I remember your fuckin wife.”

“My wife and my daughter, whom you killed.”

“Take it easy man. An accident, like I say.”

Wait. Hold back your joy, husband your energy. “So. What sort of accident?”

“Listen mister, I know it’s your wife and kid, and I sympathize with your loss, but that don’t excuse how they treated us.”

“How they treated you?”

“They asked for it,” Ray said.

Well now. That’s good. That calls for joyful uncorrupted rage. Contain it, though, steam to drive the cylinders, not swoosh out the stack. Hold the voice down, still: “Exactly what do you mean, they asked for it?”

“You want to know? Nah mister, you don’t want to know.”

“You tell me just how you think they asked for it.”

“They called us vile things.”

“They were right.”

“They was full of suspicion and dirty thoughts. Mister, they was set against us from the start. They didn’t give us a chance. They thought we was crooks and murderers and rapists from the moment they laid eyes on us. You saw that daughter of yours when we fixed your tire. They acted like we was the scum of the earth. When we got in the car, they thought it was the end of the world, like we was gonna slit their throats and fuck their dead bodies. I tell you mister, I got a certain pride how people talk to me, and there certain things I don’t put up with.”

Slow and easy. Tony said, “Their suspicions were justified.”

“They brought it on themselves.”

“You are murderers and rapists. You murdered and raped them.”

“Let me tell you, man, when someone accuses me of something, that’s an insult, it gives me the right. When Leila accuses me of screwing Janice, by God I screw Janice. If your fucking daughter thinks I’m a rapist, by God she gets raped.”

“They were right to fear you. Everything they feared came true.”

“Because they fuckin asked for it.”

“They were right you are the scum of the earth, because you are the scum of the earth.”

“You’re a fucking mushroom, man.”

“You have no rights. You lost your rights when you killed Laura and Helen.”

“I have as much rights as you do.”

“You have no rights. I’ve been waiting a year for this.”

“Yeah?”

Tony Hastings knew this pleasure of the gun in his hand and the right to insult which it gave him was a treacherous and dangerous power, for every additional insult would have to be backed up by his willingness to use that gun. He was proud of himself for running that risk, the courage he was acquiring, minute by minute.

He said, “Let me tell you something. Nobody gets away with what you did to me.”

“They don’t?”

“You came after me, that was a mistake you’ll never forget.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“You ruined my life, you’d better be scared.”

“Well gee, if I’d a known I was ruining your life—”

“I mean to make you suffer. I mean to make you remember, the reason for your suffering is what you did.”

Tony thought, I sound like Bobby Andes. Ray did not look impressed. “How do you propose to do that?”

He thought about that, a flaw in his strength, he did not know the answer. The power was only for now, the two of them together here, he with the gun. He considered how to extend the menace, protect his pleasure. “I’m turning you back to Andes.”

“That won’t work,” Ray said. “They’ve already decided there’s no case.”

How to make it dire and frightening. “Andes has other plans for you.”

“It’s Andes’s own ass from now on.”

Probably true. True also realizing this orgasm of power was based on an assumption he had not made, namely, that he was going to kill Ray Marcus. But there was also an ecstatic notion that he had now been liberated to do so, though he did not know where that idea came from. This feeling he had a right, it had been given to him. Or even a duty, which gilded the right and made it an orgy. He looked back, trying to find it: where did that liberation come from which would change the killing of Ray Marcus from a murder to a right or duty?

He remembered Bobby Andes saying, Kill him in self-defense. He doubted that was it.

He thought, Tony Hastings, professor of mathematics. Not the right thought for moments like this.

He thought, Is Tony Hastings professor of mathematics willing to accept the sympathetic but scandalous publicity and possible detention for a crime of passion everyone would understand?

Ray was studying him and said, “So why don’t you just kill me, man?”

“I’ll kill you if I have to. You think I won’t?”

“Come on man, you don’t know nothing. It’s fun to kill people. You ought to try it sometime.”

“Fun? Yes, it would be, for you.”

“Fun, right.”

“You found it fun to kill my wife and child?”

“Well, yes, I did. Yes, that was fun.”

Fun? Tony heard the word. He gathered himself together and expressed shock. “You sit there and tell me it was fun to kill my wife and daughter?”

“It’s a acquired taste,” Ray said. “It’s something you gotta learn, like hunting. You gotta get over the hump. You gotta kill someone before you know what it’s like.”

Tony was experiencing a sensation like a dazzling light.

Ray kept talking. “My pals Lou and Turk, they didn’t get it. They were scared shitless when your folks died. Shitless. They thought they was going to be charged with murder. It takes some people longer to catch on than others.”

“You don’t deserve to live,” Tony said.

“You ought to try it, Tony. Kill somebody, I guarantee you’ll want to do it again. You’re no different from nobody else.”

“Is that why you did it?” Tony said. “Because it was fun?”

“Sure. That was why.”

At that moment, Tony felt an explosion of what he thought was disgust but was really joy. The light was blinding, and it lit clearly the difference between himself and Ray, how simple it was. The fact was that Ray was wrong, Tony was not like his notion of everybody, he belonged to a different species of which a savage like Ray was completely ignorant. It was not that Tony was inhibited or asleep to the joys of killing, but that he knew too much, had too much imagination to be capable of such a pleasure. Not that he had not yet grown up to appreciate such joys but that he had grown out of them as a natural part of the process of maturation. The possible fun of killing had been trained and cultivated out of him by a civilizing process of which Ray had no comprehension, and Tony was full of fierce and vengeful contempt for that lack of comprehension. It gave him a luminous clear feeling, where he had hitherto been murky and uncertain. He felt confident. He felt right, knowing he could trust his instincts and feelings. He felt invigorated, and in this exciting mood he made a decision.

He said, “Okay Ray, enough talk. It’s time to go.”

“I told you, I ain’t going nowhere.”

They sat there a minute. Tony cocked the gun again. “Why don’t you just leave then?”

“You’ll let me?”

“I didn’t think it mattered whether I let you or not.”

“That depends on whether you can shoot that gun or not.”

“I can shoot it.”

There was a look from Ray, and Tony saw he had lost his confidence, he had seen the change in Tony.

“Maybe I’d better not leave then.”

“In that case, maybe you’d better go out and get in that car.”

“I ain’t gonna do that.”

“Then you just want to wait until they come and get you?”

“Maybe I will leave, now that you mention it.”

“I’m not going to let you.”

“Then I’d better stay.”

“Go ahead and leave. I dare you.”

“I don’t think I will.”

“I think you ought to at least try.”

“I think maybe it’s safer just sitting here.”

“I don’t think that’s so safe.”

“You don’t. Maybe you’re right.”

He stood up. “Maybe I will go.” He took a step forward, watching Tony’s hand with the gun, stopped, stepped back.

“You’d better not.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“You don’t know what to do, do you?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“I didn’t shoot you the other time. That was Bobby Andes. So what makes you think I’ll shoot you now?”

“Just to be on the safe side of things.”

“You think I’ve changed, do you? You think I’ll shoot you now?”

“It’s a dangerous weapon. You have to be careful around dangerous weapons like that.”

“The safest thing for you is to come out to the car with me.”

“I see no need of that.”

“You’re scared of me. You’re really quite frightened.”

“Don’t overrate yourself, man.”

“Why don’t you go, then?”

“I think I will.”

“What’s keeping you?”

He looked Tony in the face. He began to grin, the insolent grin of recognition Tony knew so well. “Why, nothing I guess,” he said, and stepped forward again.

Toward the door, with nothing in his way. Tony felt his lungs freeze, himself paralyzed and all his courage gone, failure and humiliation the rest of his life. Meanwhile, the gun went off. He heard the yell, “Ow! you sonofabitch,” after the explosion, which knocked the gun in his hand up bang against his forehead as the chair tilted and he fell over backward. There was Ray roaring down on him like the world, holding something, and time only to cock the gun again before the sun exploded.